From The Diligent Crafts of Textual Criticism to The Propositions of Textuality: A Practical Evaluation of The Shifting of Interpretations of Style in English Prose

Like poetry and drama, the beauty and variety of essays are of
immense value. To be precise, there is no dearth of this beauty
and variety in the scores of very impressive and high-quality
English essayists/prose writings present with us from time to time.
T
hey have left with us indelible imprints of stylish languages and
interesting subject matters ranging from society and culture to the
topics of intellectual and political debate and also from individual
perceptions to daily life incidents. In this way, the greatest ever
known authors like Francis Bacon, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele,
Jonathan Swift, Dr. Samuel Johnson,w William Hazlitt, Thomas
De Quincey, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens,
Robert Lynd, A.G. Gardiner, G.B. Shaw, George Orwell, Kurt
Vonnegut, and a lot more have established their unique identities
through their essays. The present paper attempts to make a
critical chronological survey of the uniqueness of the style of such
essayists and the mechanics that embed their writings from time
to time. It is observed that the rhetorical analysis of the classical
days is slowly substituted by personal styles such as Baconian
or Middle style or Johnsonese or Carlylese. Further, this trend
takes a substantial turn by adopting textual criticism parameters
in the hands of textual critics of the Modern Age, those who are
more or less guided by ‘close reading’ and/or adopt structuralist
parameters for the analysis of texts. Then, the changing notions
and perceptions of critical faculties of literary and linguistic
scholars lead to a focus on the textuality of the texts. Some adopt
the poststructuralist parameters of interpreting the fact and
style of such an age-old sub-genre of prose. This marks a shift in
paradigm from individual to general, leading to the generation of
multiple meanings through interdisciplinary approaches.